


Ventilate

by Chocolatepants



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Father-Son Relationship, Fluff, Gen, Light Angst, Misunderstandings, Pesterlog(s) (Homestuck), Pre-Canon, Pre-Sburb (Homestuck), back when life was simple, before the game starts, but not always easy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:53:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27815635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chocolatepants/pseuds/Chocolatepants
Summary: Pre-SburbJohn loves his Dad, but sometimes it feels like he doesn't know how to talk to him. And unfortunately, loving someone and understanding them are two different things."What are you supposed to tell him? That it feels like no one in your school is ever actually listening to what you have to say. That every time you try to pull a prank on one of your friends from school they just ignore you or get you sent to detention. That it feels like you’ve spent your whole life waiting for something and the only time you don’t feel like that is when you’re talking with Dave or Rose or Jade. How do you put into words that you don’t know how to be the man he wants you to be, when you barely know how to be a kid!"
Kudos: 7





	Ventilate

**Author's Note:**

> A small thing I did about John, might do more for the rest of the beta kids  
> Just a little slice of life for John before the game starts  
> When you're a kid it can feel like the hardest problem you'll ever face is making friends and understanding your parents.

Your room smells like a freshly baked chocolate cake and you hate it. You hate it so goddamn much you don’t know what to do with yourself. The worst part is that this isn’t even a new occurrence. It feels like all the air in your room has been infected with sugar for months and honestly you’re not sure how much longer you can take it before you just snap and yell at your Dad to please, please, please just make a normal dinner.

You drag yourself up from the floor and open the window of your room, hoping to get some fresh air in. It’s a gray day outside, with clouds that cover the sky and seem like they’ll never move forward. As you unlock the window a breeze rushes in, helping dispel the horrible smell of baked goods, but sending the homework you’d been working on flying across the room. You let out a frustrated sigh and trudge across your room to pick up parts of an essay that were due two days ago. You’ve never been great with keeping the deadlines for all your work, but Dad’s been getting on your case lately.

“Learning proper punctuality is an important step on your journey to become a man John!”

“John, you can’t let yourself fall behind in your classes. School is an important step on your journey to be a man!”

“John, your teacher called me today and said you’ve been skipping class, don’t you know that perfect attendance is an important step on your-” blah blah blah.

It’s the same spiel you’ve heard a million times before about a million different things and honestly? You really didn’t care the first time you heard it either. Not that you want to disappoint your Dad, you love him, you really do! It’s just that sometimes it feels like nothing you do is ever “right” according to him. 

As you get the papers of your essay back in order you drop them on your spot on the floor where you’d been working. The smell of cake has faded exponentially and the wind that sent your stuff flying, gently wraps around you like an old coat. You take a deep breath in and feel like you can finally concentrate. 

It takes you another hour before the paper is done. It’s five pages of rambling thoughts about the book The Hatchet that you had to read for English. You talked about how Brian Robeson’s determination to survive in the wilderness is an inspiration for 12 year olds everywhere and when he fought a bear off it was both symbolically and literally pretty damn cool. To be honest, you read the first two chapters and barely skimmed the rest of the book. Something about the daring journey of a kid who has to survive on his own didn’t really seem as interesting as your fifth rewatch of Con Air. But whatever, the paper’s done and so are you.  
You leave your room and head downstairs and hear the light sounds of piano music from your Dad’s radio. It’s a peaceful song that sets you on edge because you know he always listens to music when he’s baking. As you peek your head down the hall, you unfortunately see an abundance of cupcakes that your Dad is trying to frost. You say “trying” because it looks a lot more like he’s about to go to war with the piping bag and sprinkles lest they start cooperating with his demands. Luckily he’s distracted so you hope this will be a quick in and out mission. You do your best to sneak into the kitchen, hoping to grab some chips and maybe a soda before you could sprint upstairs and call Rose and ask her if your essay is stupid or passable. But just as you make it past the kitchen table you trip on a poorly placed fake mustache (who could’ve left that there) and fall on your face, altering Dad to your position. Well, stealth is compromised, the only thing left to do is fight your way out of here and hope you escape with your life….or at least without having to eat any cake. 

Dad drops the mangled piping bag on the counter and turns to you with a cupcake in hand. Before you can even think of absconding he’s right in front of you with a horrible blue cupcake and a look on his face of Stern Fatherly Disapproval™. You were trying to avoid eating another terribly Betty Crocker cake, but honestly you would eat a hundred cupcakes if it meant you could avoid the terrible speech you know you’re about to hear.  
He hands you the cupcake. “So, how’s your essay going?”

You make no move to eat the evil food. “I’m almost done. I was just gonna send it to Rose and see what she thinks about it. She’s really good at writing and I was hoping she might edit it for me before I hand it in tomorrow.”

At the mention of Rose you see Dad’s face, frown a little. Not in a way that means he’s upset, but clearly a way that means he’s got something to say and is trying to find the best way to phrase it. 

“Oh I’m sure Rose is a great writer. But I was wondering if you might want to share it with maybe some other kids in your class? Like some of your friends from school?”

At the mention of your friends from school you start picking at the lining of the cupcake wrapper. When you don’t answer right away Dad says, “Not that it really matters of course, I know you have your online friends that you talk to all the time, but it might be nice to hang out with some of the other kids in the neighborhood. Get yourself out of the house sometimes.”

You’ve completely peeled the wrapper off the cupcake now and you're just folding it in half again and again so you can have something to do with your hands. The air in the kitchen is so sweet. From the frosting dripping from the piping bag that your Dad is holding, to the oven that’s still producing more for the army of cupcakes, to the loose sugar on the counter that’s sitting next to yet another batch of cake batter. It’s suffocating in here, even when you can breathe fine and you know it’s not your Dad’s fault and you wish he would just stop-

CRACK

Thunder whips from outside. The window above the sink swings open and the gray of the sky from earlier seems to have settled into a dark black that fills the sky with void. It’s raining lightly but the wind is enough to bowl you over and send your Dad’s hat flying. He stands up to chase it down and close the windows, saving you from having to answer his question immediately.

What are you supposed to tell him? That it feels like no one in your school is ever actually listening to what you have to say. That every time you try to pull a prank on one of your friends from school they just ignore you or get you sent to detention. That it feels like you’ve spent your whole life waiting for something and the only time you don’t feel like that is when you’re talking with Dave or Rose or Jade. How do you put into words that you don’t know how to be the man he wants you to be, when you barely know how to be a kid!

Dad’s picked his hat up from the floor and shuts the window with a *click* of the lock being put into place. He looks at you from the sink and sees his son. He sees you standing in the kitchen with crumbs of an uneaten cupcake on your hand and ink stuck to your face from where you’d bit the tip of your pen from writing an essay that’s already late. And he thinks about how it was just yesterday that you were 3 years old and playing on the swing-set he’d built outside. And You don’t know this but as he looks at you he feels so proud of the person you’re growing up to be.  
Dad sighs and takes the last batch of cupcake out of the oven. “But honestly the kids in this neighborhood are actually pretty awful, probably a good thing you aren’t messing around with a couple of houdlins like them.”

You smile a bit at his attempt to make you feel better. And maybe it’s just that the air is a little cleaner, but you genuinely do feel better. “Oh yea, they’re the worst. The other day I saw Jimmy Mackel try to break down his own front door with a drop kick. I think he broke his foot too, because he’s been using crutches at school since Monday.”

You watch as your Dad laughs and puts the finishing touches on the last cupcake and sets it aside. “Well I’m glad that you’re smart enough to know an idiot when you see one. Now let’s get some real food for dinner.”

Dad pulls out some bread to make you two some sandwiches for dinner and you can’t help but feel lighter as you chat with him about school and the game you just downloaded. The thunder from earlier rumbles softly in the distance, but the black clouds are still outside lightly rolling across the sky. It’s not a beautiful night, but you enjoy it regardless.

When you head up to your room an hour later it’s nearly dark out. You flip on the light switch and see your essay sitting on the floor where you’d left it. Picking it up, you head to your desk and turn on the computer. Messages from Rose and Dave are sitting in your chat box on Pesterchum.

turntechGodhead: john my dude my bro please ignore whatever rose is about to send you...please for the sake of our friendship ignore her forever... just block her ass on every account you have and say your tearful goodbye

You immediately check to see what Rose sent you.

tentacleTherapist: John as your dear friend I must demand that you ignore any request or desperate plea Dave may have sent your way and look at this stupid ass selfie he accidentally sent me

Attached is a stupid ass selfie of Dave looking like he accidentally opened up the camera on his phone when he was trying to unlock it. He looks stupid as hell. You save it to your camera roll immediately. You respond to Rose.

ectoBiologist: thank you for sharing this gift with me rose, i shall treasure this photo forever.  
ectoBiologist: also would you mind looking over this essay i wrote? i don’t need a perfect score, but a passing grade would be nice :)  
tentacleTherapist: Of course, send it over.

You send Rose some pictures of your essay and she gets back to you saying it is a truly mediocre essay, but good enough for a B. You count that as a victory and spend the rest of the night catching up with your friends. You talk about your shitty essay and Dave’s shitty selfie and Rose’s shitty mom and it’s a good night. 

The window you left open earlier blows the curtains around and distracts you enough that you look at the clock and realize it’s almost 1 am. You say your goodbyes to your friends and get ready for bed. As you lie in bed fighting sleep you find yourself gazing out the window into the inky black sky. You feel a sense of contentment as you close your eyes and drift off to sleep. Maybe every day could be just like this one. A little bit cloudy, but still good.


End file.
